28-Apr-2012 -- Travelling around Amazon is always a fantastic, but hard experience. Amazon environment is always showing men that nature is stronger than us, and we must never underestimate its power.
In 2009 my cousin Victor and I had reached a very difficult confluence spot in the middle of the jungle, and it was our first “first visit” to a confluence. Since then, we had planned to reach 1N 61W as soon we had spare time to do it. As Victor lives far from Manaus, where I live, we waited almost 03 years for this trip.
The confluence is located 570 km far from our starting point in Manaus, in the state of Roraima. We knew the confluence was located in a cattle farm, but we had no idea if we would have to trespass native jungle. So we loaded a small truck with all the tools we could need: machetes, hammers, knives, lights, food, waterproof boots, and anything else we decided important for that. We left Manaus at 09:00h am, driving north at the only paved highway we have in the area, the BR-174.
We drove 109 km to the next town, Presidente Figueiredo. After a quick pit stop for breakfast, we kept driving north. Another 80 kilometers and we reached the Waimiri-Atroari Indian reserve, where we could watch lots of native animals crossing the highway, and naked Indians hunting with their guns. It’s a wonderful experience for anyone who had never visited the area before. The highway crosses the reserve for about 180 km, and after that we arrived at the Roraima state. At kilometer 500 mark, we turned east in a dirt road heading to São Luiz do Anauá, the town where the confluence point is located. It was already 05:00 pm when we arrived the town, and decided to keep going before the sun went down (and it darkens very early in the Amazon). We parked our car in a pig farm closer to the cattle farm where the point was, and asked for information about the CP farm owners. After a few conversations and phone contacts, we were allowed to keep walking to the point, which was located 850 meter far from the road.
We were advised that we had to cross a small water creek and some dense jungle before arriving the CP, so we should rush if we wanted to do it the same day. We entered the farm area around 05:30 h, and we had, as first impression, that it would be a “piece of cake”. But after 250 m we saw the creek, which made us to make a big detour, adding about 1 km to our original planned track. The sunlight started getting lower and lower, and when the GPS showed us we were 80 m far from CP, we arrived at the dense jungle area.
Inside this area, it was completely dark, as the trees were very tall and dense, blocking any sunlight. So we took the N-S-W-E pictures for the DCP, and kept walking to the CP bull’s eye. But we couldn’t go closer than 20 meters far from it, as the jungle made a natural wall against us, and also it started raining. We then took the GPS picture in order to proving we were there, and walked back.
The walking back was terrible. A heavy rain started punishing our equipment, and the small water creek turned itself into a flood wide lagoon. It was completely dark, and we decided the best way to come back would be following the farm fence, even if we had to cross the water. We took almost 40 minutes to walk back a little less than one kilometer, but we arrived our car in safety. We drove back to the town for rest and dinner, and the day after we drove back home. Now it’s our second “First Visit” to a CP, which we named Confluence Cesarino II.
Some info about it:
- Closest town: São Luiz do Anauá, Roraima state.
- Elevation: about 100m.
- Weather: heavy rain all the time, and warm temperatures.
- Vegetation: the area has a transition between Amazon Rain Forest, and savannah.
- The state of Roraima is a very peculiar place to visit. It’s a small area, but we may see rain forest, savannah, native Indians in many reserves, big lakes, wild horses running all around the fields, farms, mountain chains, and the wonderful Mount Roraima, immortalized by Sir. A.C. Doyle in his book “The Lost World”